Dennis Yates - Red Mountain

He lifted his rifle and hobbled toward the house, his bad hip sending a hot stitch up through his lower back. By the time he reached the front doorway, Logan’s screams had stopped. Goosebumps traveled up Underwood’s back and across his arms. He hadn’t heard a man scream like that since the time he’d come upon some Indians on a moonlit night during his first year as sheriff, had witnessed a man being skinned alive for raping and killing a young woman from their tribe.

Underwood shouted Logan’s name as he made his way into the house, staring at the wooden pictures on the walls. It seemed as if the things depicted in Horn’s carvings had started moving, like the moving picture machine he’d once seen at the state fair. Except these were different. They swirled and hummed with a life of their own, transforming into scenes from a hell never before imagined. He watched in horror as a herd of elk melted into vile creatures playing catch with squirming naked humans, impaling them on their horns. In another grisly tableau a group of cowboys sat around a campfire on a starry night, drinking coffee. Suddenly, hellish beings made of fire leaped out of the campfire and engulfed the men in balls of flame.

He swore he could smell them burning. It was so real, and then again it wasn’t.

Underwood shook his head to get rid of the bad thoughts streaming inside. He recalled the havoc played on the Wrath Butte residents unfortunate enough to have something made from Horn’s hands. In some ways he could understand why a vigilante party had formed and done what they did. So many folks in Wrath Butte had nearly gone insane. Underwood’s neighbor, a mother of four, was preparing to put out her children’s eyes when their father had heard the cries and stopped her…

He stepped into the room with the wood stove, but the pot of hot water Logan had seen was gone. A crimson sunset bled between the boards nailed across the room’s only window. There was no sign of his deputy anywhere.

Suddenly the floor below Underwood began to drop. He instinctively tried to back up, but the trap door caught him in the lower back and sent him plunging into a deep pit of carved rock. The wind was knocked from his lungs when he hit bottom, and he heard the fractured ends of bones tearing through skin. His left leg had snapped apart above the knee and his right arm was dislocated and twisted behind his back. Glancing up, he saw his bloodless palm looked as if it were about to pat him on top of the head.

Next came a sickening squeal, and when the Sheriff looked up he saw the square of floor settling back into place. He gripped his rifle one-handedly and fired. Splinters rained down onto his face, but the door continued to rise until it settled back into place. Now in complete darkness, Underwood gradually lost consciousness. He felt as if he were bobbing on the surface of a black tide. He remembered taking his wife to see the Pacific Ocean not long after they’d married. They’d sat up on a cliff together and just watched the waves for hours, eating a picnic lunch of fried chicken and apple pie.

Caroline…

Eventually the presence of light caused Underwood to open his eyes. He’d toppled over sometime during the night, and the side of his face was pressed against the cold floor. He felt like an insect that had been crushed under someone’s boot and left in a tangled mess. His clothes were covered with damp, bloody straw. He heard water dripping from further back in the cave. As he lay craving a drink of it, he saw a child moving toward him, clutching a tiny lantern.

“Help me...” Underwood pleaded, lifting his only good hand.

The child backed away several steps and stared at him, the expression on its thin white face both scared and curious. Its head was shorn and scabby. Underwood let out a sigh and gently motioned the child over. The child didn’t move. It stood silently, studying Underwood’s mangled body, the stream of blood flowing from his left ear and down to his jaw where it fell off in thick drops.

He couldn’t even tell at first if the child was a girl or a boy, until he eventually recognized him as Horn’s youngest son. It had been a long time since he’d seen any of Horn’s children, so long since anyone had seen much of the Horn family at all. Rumor was the mother and eldest son had fallen victims to a disfiguring disease, leaving only Jared and his youngest child capable of making their bi-monthly trips into town.

“Don’t be afraid of me boy. I mean you no harm.”

He began to drag himself across the floor so the boy could see his face better in the wavering candlelight. The boy stepped back and lit several candles in a small alcove. As Underwood’s eyes adjusted to the light, he wished he’d stayed put.

Holy Christ…

Resting on a bed of dirty yellow straw were thick blocks of clouded ice. One lay split apart and leaking. Ice like that, Underwood knew, could only have been taken down from the mountains in the back of a mule-drawn wagon.

In the flickering candlelight he could make out a grayish form suspended inside the unbroken block. It occurred to Underwood the steaming pot of hot water sitting next to it was there for the purpose of helping it melt. When the child touched the block with his palm Underwood was startled by a shadowy movement inside. The boy took his hand away and giggled.

“What is it?” Underwood asked, not believing his eyes. Torrents of pain passed through his body, creating hallucinations that played tricks on his mind.

The boy grinned and picked up the lantern from the floor. Before Underwood could say another word the boy disappeared. He thought he heard the padding of bare feet ascending a wooden staircase and shouted at the boy to come back. As the night wore on, he watched the candles sink into runny puddles on top of the blocks of ice. Then, just as he was going to shut his eyes again, he heard the sound of something moving toward him through the near darkness, its hot breath stinking of raw flesh and death.

“Sheriff… Sheriff…” hissed a voice just outside the golden refuge of candle light.

Underwood strained to see, but it was too dark. Then the candles began to go out, one by one, and with each candle he could feel the temperature of his blood drop several more degrees.

It can’t be Horn. Horn’s dead…

He loaded his rifle and braced it against his good knee.

But then again it might be….

“Sheriff… Sheriff…”

He could have sworn the voice was a woman’s.

He had an idea. A desperate one and the only damn card he had left holding…

“You and I’ve got no bad blood between us,” he shouted to the unknown presence. “I’m asking you to let me live. I’ve got a wife and a daughter who need me. If you just put me on my horse, I can take myself home. I’ll tell them all you’re dead so they won’t come looking for you.”

Underwood waited. Whoever—whatever—had stopped calling his name. But it hadn’t stopped coming toward him. He listened to the gritty scrape of its feet.

“I’m begging you. Please…”

Shaking badly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden match. He struck it against his silver belt buckle, stretched out his good arm and held it there.

A shape suddenly blurred into view, a human monster covered in sticky yellow fat. Its jaw sank into the sheriff’s wrist and tore it away in seconds. Blood sailed from the ragged stump and pattered against the candle-lit blocks of ice. The match he’d lit still flickered in the palm of his severed hand.

When Underwood fainted the thing leaped on top of him. In the pitch black he felt its muscular thighs rock against his groin, and its long hair fell into his face and tickled it just as his wife’s sometimes did. He felt himself getting hard, and forgot for a bittersweet moment he was probably bleeding to death. He lifted his hips and moaned, his mind engulfed by an unspeakable ecstasy as long finger nails twirled playfully with his ears before plunging deep inside, stirring the delicate bones and flesh into a pulpy soup.